Food History

Sharyn’s children are all christened. I couldn’t be there, because seventh day Passover and christenings really don’t match, but my thoughts were with them all.

She says that she has a couple of posts to take us through the missing food elements and then that’s it: we will have a complete documentation of a rural Australian christening with stories. Although I admit, I wasn’t expecting the Mayan aspect of today’s post.

“Perhaps this one should be called ‘Recipes from before a Country Christening,’ because when you have a wedding, 21st, christening etc in rural Australia, you have people coming from all over the place, and you are never catering for just the one meal. We already have friends here, from both interstate and overseas, more family and friends are expected today, although precise numbers are unclear. So, not being one hundred per cent certain of how many I’ll be feeding, I decided late last night, while roasting the chicken for the ‘Chicken, Leek, and Tarragon Pie’, to make pumpkin soup, and get the makings out for a casserole.

It then made sense, while I had the oven on, to prepare the bread cases for the ‘Smoked Salmon Tartlets’, and one of my houseguests decided to pitch in with her own favourite recipe, what she calls her ‘Sinking Mud Muffins’, so we’ll have something to offer with coffee & tea today. And after all, doesn’t everyone make muffins at midnight?

But she couldn’t have chosen a better comfort food for me. Chocolate has been used as important parts of people’s social and religious lives, since the Mayans grew it in Mesoamerica (250-900 AD). Modern studies have proven what is in it that makes us feel so good, and as a child, my best friend’s mother used to make the darkest, moistest, absolute best chocolate cake. She knew I was somewhat partial to it, so weekends when I stayed over there would always be a big slab of frosted chocolate cake to have with our morning tea mugs of Milo.

As a teenager I moved to Wodonga for work, and my friend moved to Benalla. Whenever she came home, even unexpected visits, she’d ring me, and I’d head straight out to see her. It took me half an hour to get out there and I’d walk in the door, just as her Mum would be removing a freshly baked chocolate cake from the oven. “I knew you were coming”, she’d grin, “so I made you a cake.” It’s not really any wonder I named one of my daughters after this woman.

So today, while I raise a glass in honour of the Anzac’s, make ‘Frangelico Truffles’ as gifts for my boys god-parents, eat chocolate muffins, and my house fills with more of the people I love, I’m sharing my recipe for the truffles. To my mind, nothing else could quite say thank you, to those people for making the commitment they have chosen to make to my children, like handmade chocolate.

Frangelico Chocolate Truffles

Ganache
8 oz (230 g) dark sweet chocolate
2/3 c. heavy cream
2 Tablespoons Frangelico.
Dipping
16 oz. (450 g) dark sweet chocolate
1/4 cup vegetable oil

Garnish
2 cups chocolate shavings.

When chocolate and cream ganache have cooled to room temperature, stir in sherry before refrigerating. Roll dipped truffle in chocolate shavings. “

I’ve been eating birthday cakes. Mine. Plural. My mother made me one for the day nine family members got together for a birthday dinner. She made me another one for today, since it’s my actual birthday. The first was a chocolate sponge made with potato flour (since it’s still Passover) and the second was an orange-hazelnut cake.

Friends and relatives have been drifting in and out for the last few days, too.

No, I’m not having a major birthday, although turning a prime number is a rather cool thing. I’m just lucky enough to have a birthday that coincides with an Australian public holiday and (this year, though not most years) Passover.

It’s family time and a long weekend and everyone is slowing down a bit and my parents’ place is good to visit. This means I’m having a gentle but prolonged happytime.

There is food history involved. Of course there is. How could there not be? Not just Sharyn’s lovely posts (more to come, by the way, but tonight is about birthdays), but friends and family remembering fruit past and recipes present. Sometimes they remembered fruit present and recipes past.

Between us we have eaten amazing amounts of food (I shall roll home quite soon, I think, even though home is hundreds of miles from here) and spun so many stories and made so many jokes that I can’t remember the half of them.

Anywhere, that’s where I’ve been. In a smaller world than usual, celebrating Passover and my forty-seventh birthday and remembering the past. Some of the past hasn’t been happy – ANZAC Day is not really a happy history, after all, but it’s all worth remembering.

The best thing about a birthday? The more of them I have the more I have learned and the better I understand the past.

PS I haven’t forgotten presents. In fact, at least one needs blogging, one day soon.

Culcairn is heating up, as you can see from this post. By Saturday, there will be enough food in that town to feed double the usual number. Enjoy Sharyn’s latest post!

“Recipes from a Country Christening

My childhood memories of food at parties may well be different from people the same age in other areas. With the migrant camp at Bonegilla http://www.environment.gov.au/heritage/national/sites/bonegilla.html introducing a wide variety of people to our region, we had an incredible amount of choice.

Pot-luck dinners run by the CWA might have French style ragouts; sweet and sour sausages & rice (the rice was always cold and gluggy); stroganoff; homemade pizzas on scone dough; homemade spring rolls; kransky; tuna mornay; and my favourite, lasagna. Big, solid layers of meat and tomato sauce, nutmeg flavoured cheese sauce and homemade pasta. Sweets could range from platters of fairy bread and honey joys; bread and butter pudding; to fresh apple strudel. I have fond memories of watching the strudel pastry being made.

Making fresh pasta, and tomato sauce, for a lasagna always takes me back to the aromas of my friends mum’s kitchen, when I was a kid. It takes a bit extra time, but the flavor is always well worth the effort.

Home-Made Pasta Dough

INGREDIENTS

400g plain flour (strong/bread flour is best, but you can get passable results with ordinary plain flour)
4 whole eggs, lightly beaten
salt to taste
METHOD

Place flour onto the work surface, and make a well. Add eggs, salt and gradually work into the flour until a soft and pliable dough forms. Knead the dough until smooth and consistent - 5 minutes should do.
Allow dough to rest for an hour, covered in cling wrap, in the refrigerator. Divide dough into 4 balls. Flatten each ball into a disk and pass through the pasta machine on the widest setting, Fold in half lengthways and repeat. Keep rolling twice on each setting until you reach the narrowest setting.
Cut pasta if it gets too long.

* To roll by hand, divide mixture into manageable balls. Roll each portion evenly onto a well-floured board. A marble rolling pin is best for this job.
Dust rolled pasta with extra semolina and allow to rest for 10 minutes before using, or air dry the pasta until required.

Pasta Sauce

INGREDIENTS

10 large tomatoes
1 heaped tablespoon dried basil, or half a bunch of finely chopped fresh basil leaves
1 teaspoon butter
1 onion, finely diced
1 cup stock (chicken or vegetable)
½ cup red wine

METHOD

In a medium sized stockpot (you can use a deep-sided saucepan) melt the butter, and fry onion til soft. Add roughly chopped tomatoes and stir for several minutes. Add stock, basil and wine. Bring to the boil, and stir while tomato flesh breaks down. Season to taste, and simmer for approx half an hour, or until sauce has reduced. For a smooth sauce, blend for a few minutes with a stick blender.”

More from Sharyn Lilley. I’m so going to make that entree when Passover is over!

“For a while in the 50s my father drove trucks for a living. The highway was tarmac, but most other roads weren’t, and air conditioning was of the ‘roll your window down for cool or up for warmth’ variety. This method was also used to control the dust intake.

Drive through service hadn’t been heard of, but there were a few twenty four hour cafes where they offered sit down meals of steak, eggs and onions; pies, chips and peas; fish, chips and salads; hearty soups and thick bakery bread. In Victoria, trucks were not permitted to drive between midnight Saturday night, and midnight Sunday night.

Today’s first recipe gives a nod to the cafes of old, with steak, onions and homemade bread.

Steak and Caramelized Onion Entree

Slice a whole loaf of wholegrain bread, I prefer it to be about as thick as toast loaf and cut each slice into quarters. Line a baking tray with silicone paper, lightly brush both sides of bread with oil, and toast under a grill. (The cheats version is to buy packets of mini toasts)

Heat a non-stick fry pan, add a tablespoon of oil. Add two thick pieces of rump steak, sear each side, and then add ½ cup red wine and mixed herbs to the pan, simmer until steak cooked to your preference. Set steaks aside, cover loosely with foil.

Slice two large red onions thinly. Fry gently in half a tablespoon of butter until soft, then add one tablespoon of brown sugar, and one tablespoon of red wine vinegar. Cook, stirring, until caramelized, remove from heat.

Spread toasts with seeded mustard. Slice steaks thinly, and cut to fit the toasts. Top each toast with half a teaspoon of onion; garnish with chopped fresh parsley leaves.

Makes roughly 40 toasts.

Smoked Salmon Tartlets

400 grams smoked salmon
1 tub cream cheese
Two spring onions thinly sliced
1 loaf white bread
Sprigs of fresh dill

Using a fluted biscuit cutter, cut rounds from the bread. Lightly grease two mini muffin trays. Line trays with the rounds of bread, and lightly toast in the oven. Set aside to cool.

Slice the spring onions finely, mix well into the cream cheese. Fill the bread cases with cream cheese mixture. Top with small amounts of the smoked salmon, and fresh dill.”

More from Sharyn. She’s writing us a series, in fact, so you can get a real sense of what catering and family and family foodways are in her tiny corner of rural Australia. Don’t forget to visit her at Eneit Press and find out what she’s up to when she’s not cooking!

“A christening might not be what most people associate with the Anzac weekend, but it has both sentimental and practical reasons for being chosen. Practical, because a long weekend allows our interstate guests to be able to get here; sentimental, because amongst the letters and keepsakes I inherited from my grandmother, is a post card, with a beautifully hand embroidered flower, and a robin redbreast in flight. The chain-stitched letters spell out To My Dear Father, and a brief message, scrawled on the back was the first indication my great-grandparents had that their eldest son had survived Gallipoli. It seems fitting that his youngest great-grandsons should be christened on that weekend.

My grandparents were married in 1920, Granddad had returned from the war ill, and wounded, and used his Soldiers Allotment to purchase land at Leneva. When they married they ran a poultry farm there. Which leads me to today’s recipe – one of the main meal dishes I’ll be preparing next weekend.

Chicken, Leek, and Tarragon Pie

Filling:
50g butter
2 tbs plain flour
1 leek, ends trimmed, washed and thinly sliced
1 1/2 cups chicken stock (I use Oxo cubes if I don’t have fresh stock – that’s just a personal favourite)
1/2 cup cream
1 tsp dried tarragon.
Pinch of white pepper
1 large ready cooked chicken, (again, just because it’s homemade doesn’t mean cheats aren’t available) skin and bones removed, meat shredded

Melt butter in a saucepan over low heat until foaming. Add leek and cook, stirring, for 5 minutes or until the leek softens. Add flour and cook, stirring, for 5 minutes or until mixture bubbles. Remove from heat. Gradually add stock, whisking until smooth.
Whisk the cream, tarragon and pepper into the flour mixture. Season with salt, and stir in the chicken. Set aside to cool completely.

Thaw out three sheets of frozen short crust pastry. Line a 22cm (base measurement) springform pan with silicone baking paper, and then line with two sheets of the pastry, allowing sides to overhang. Spoon the chicken mixture into the pan. Shape the remaining sheet of pastry to fit the top, and then enclose the filling by folding down the overhang of the base. Cut vent holes in the center, brush lightly with either an egg wash, or milk, and bake on lowest shelf of oven for 35 minutes or until crust crisp and golden. Set aside to cool slightly. Can be served cold or warm, but at this time of year, and with this being for an evening meal, mine will be served warm.

Dad tells me Grandma used to make a similar version topped with potatoes; I might have to try that one day. ”

A few weeks ago I thought I had suddenly aged ten years. Maybe twenty. I kept dreaming of flavours of Passover past. This is one of the reasons I gave you those posts about my notebook (they will return, when I have time to get back to them). “I’m getting old and grouchy,” I told myself. “Even dried fruit was different forty years ago.” Maybe it was time to buy that walking stick I joke about?

A friend and I did a market visit a week ago and I found some dried plums. These prunes reminded me exactly of the dried fruit of my childhood. “How is this possible?” I thought. I memorized their details and brought some for my mother to try. I wanted to see if it was all in my imagination, or if there was something to be learned about local food history.

They were sun-dried, with no chemicals. They were angelinas. Fresh angelinas are a very dark purple and crisp and sweet and have a very slight tartness to them. The dried fruit came from a local Canberra orchard (using the Australian definition of ‘local – anything up to two hours drive away’).

My mother tried them. She didn’t speak for a minute. She, too, had been transported back to Passovers past.

It appeared she, too, had bought from a local orchard (except local to Melbourne, not to Canberra) when I was exceedingly young. There was only a little imported kosher for Passover food back then, and very few food choices at all. Everything was supplemented by dried fruit. Mum and Dad knew someone and they grew angelinas and made the most wonderful dried fruit.

And so we repeat the past without even knowing it. This means I’m still middle-aged and can’t justify that cane yet. I can still feel grouchy if I want, but right now I don’t want.

You see, the prunes were only available for a few weeks a year then, and they are now. They’re round at the tail end of summer and the beginning of autumn. This means that, around Passover every year, this particular dried fruit has been available in south-eastern Australia since the first Angelina plum tree was planted by Europeans.

Tonight I’m not really here. In fact, I’m probably eating. Even overeating.

It’s first night Passover (if I’ve got my dates right) and – all going well – I’m in the heart of my family, doing all the traditional things an Orthodox Jewish family in Australia does for Passover. We eat meat and matzah and talk muchly and do many other things that begin with ‘m’.

I’m actually at my computer at home right now, trying to work out what on earthy you need to know about food on Saturday. My mind is in turmoil because there’s so much happening around me, including packing presents and finishing enough work to take the key days off and my historical imagination has somehow dried up. I was wondering – do those of you who have big Christmasses get this sort of intellectual drought three days before Christmas?

Let me tell you a bit about what my family eat. I’ve done that before, but that was for another Passover. Maybe this year I’ll tell you about what we don’t eat?

We don’t eat lamb, though sometimes we might have a lamb shank on the seder plate. Some Jewish families do, some don’t. The ones who don’t, mostly do it out of a tradition that keeps (or intends to keep) the memory of the Temple alive. I had an elderly aunt who had giant food restrictions, so Mum cooked lamb for her, but not for the rest of us.

We don’t eat anything with leavening in, because the yeast didn’t have time to rise for the bread before our ancestors had the flee Egypt. This includes both soy sauce and vegemite, and I just finished the last of my ordinary soy sauce, as a token effort towards good behaviour. I’ll buy more after Passover.

We (Ashkenazi Jews, not all Jews) don’t eat several other things, because of cultural tradition. One year I persuaded the family into trying rice, because we don’t actually know that our ancestry is all Ashkenazi, though some certainly is. The things change depending on background. Our list includes rice, obviously, and I think the rest are all legumes.

Then there are the usual forbidden stuffs- mixing meat with milk being the biggest.

I’ll report on how it all went (and how I yearn for soy sauce) when the real date has caught up with my advance posting. Maybe in day or two by your time. And yes, my mind is not where it should be. This is because I just realized I have tops to take with me, but no bottoms, and I doubt I should turn up half naked.

Foodways link us with our younger selves. The create bridges across time and space.

This week I’m doing a bit of a clean out. My cupboard is a bit emptier. There’s no flour, no yeast. I’ve thrown out the very few things that were past their use by date and, if I have time, I’ll haul the last bits of food out and reline the shelves.

This is an annual event. I come from a kosher household, you see, and one big thing about kosher households is Passover. So this week my links with my childhood are through tidying my own kitchen a bit. I can’t leave it untouched, but I really don’t feel up to the megasort and clean much of the rest of my family does.

From Saturday night, the foodways bridge across time isn’t quite as alone. So many of us. A whole big family drifting in and out of each other’s presence. We eat fabulous dinners, and my mother’s macaroons and lots and lots of buts and dried fruit. My father used to threaten that we would turn into nuts. My stepfather has his own jokes.

What do these foodways do? They reinforce our family culture and remind us of where we belong. They keep recipes alive and make sure that even the relatives who don’t get on will talk once or twice a year. It’s a time to forge new communities and to reforge establishing ones. And the preparations are the time we rewrite those bridges in our mind and think about who we are and why these things are important to us. For some people they are and for some they aren’t. For some families they are and for some not.

This is the heart of cultural variation and finding our place in the world. Food counts.

Today is strangely sybaritic. I’m eating the most beautiful chicken pate (apart from my family’s) that I have ever tasted in Australia. The pate guy at the market gave me some. He makes two pork-free pates and one pork-free rillette. And yes, the pate has gone directly to my brain and completely blocked eloquent speech. It’s that good.

It makes me look at a bag of carrots and see many hues, not just orange. Oh, there are multiple colours of carrot in that bag. That’s right. The vegetable guy took one look at me and said there was a bunch waiting for me which had more purple carrots than the other bunch. I can show my students four colours of carrots on Thursday. And I didn’t even have to ask.

Elizabeth and Michael made sure there was just enough lamb of exactly the right sort so dinner tonight is saltbush lamb. My friend and I shared a quarter of a lamb and it was exactly enough. Which reminds me, Michael says Elizabeth needs a good historical recipe for leg of lamb and of course I just happen to have one. This is a giant relief, because everyone has been so kind to me this morning that I feel a bit guilty.

I told the teenager serving coffee the history of the beans she was serving today and suddenly I realised how everyone knows me. It’s good, though, to know that there will be duck pate reserved for me to buy every fortnight just as the cheese lady always goes straight to my favourite Milawa chevre. What’s also good is that I compared all this luxury food with the amount I spent in the supermarket on way inferior stuff and I found that I come out even. I’m healthier, happier and can talk to the producers and be given special treats, and it costs me the same (overall) as supermarket shopping!

Let me assuage my guilt with Alison’s question. Everyone else who has questions says I apparently have already answered them – this means the rest of you miss out and might have to find your own questions. Email me and ask anytime. I was afraid there would be a mad rush: my other blog sometimes gets a mad rush when I open the door to questions, but quite a few role playing gamers and re-enactment folk and writers who use historical backdrops who visit me there.

Alison, I don’t know the exact history of your Easter dish, but I can lay bets that it arose in the joy of leaving Lent behind. Lots of Catholic regions have special dishes to celebrate the end of Lent and they usually include foodstuffs that are forbidden during Lent. One day I might have to do a post on that whole food sequence, from before Lent to after it – it has produced some fascinating foodways.

I now return to gloating over my market goodies.

Today is Good Friday for Christians and Purim for Jews. This is an unusual juxtaposition. The Jewish leap year is partly to blame – it means that all Jewish festivals are a bit later than usual. The moon cycles are also the blame: Easter is early this year.

What it means in terms of food traditions is that some members of the community have a fast day and some have a feast day. It’s traditional for Ashkenazi Jews, for instance, to give two different types of food to friends (which is why I’ve invited friends over tonight to celebrate – much easier than making baskets and explaining them, especially given that my family tradition didn’t include the basket-giving), to eat particular types of pastries, to read the Book of Esther, to get drunk. Every year I announce to my non-Jewish friends that I have a religious obligation to get drunk, and every year I get appropriate reactions. There aren’t that many Jews in Australia, you see, and so there’s always someone who doesn’t have a clue about my festivals.

Tonight we’re drinking my medlar liqueur, of course, but also soft drinks and cordials and maybe wine. The foodways truth of my religious festivals is that I don’t really enjoy getting drunk and nor do any of my family. We always drank enough to ensure we were celebrating and happy, but we never became more than slightly tipsy. Foodways meet religious obligation and most of the time foodways wins. This is because, as hostess, I never have enough time to sit down and debate the issue, nor even enough time to drink more than a glass. I love the thought of being drunk on Purim, but it’s only happened twice in forty-six years.

One day I must ask a rabbi if letting my family custom and interest in enjoying drink intervene in the mitzvah of getting drunk is a problem. That last sentence was a problem, but I rather suspect that the medlar liqueur (four types thereof) will suffice, religiously, even if I only have three sips of each kind.

Foodways and religion are not always a combination made in heaven. I really need to think this out a bit.

I visited the Royal Canberra Show a little while ago. I know I’ve told you that already and I know I’ve promised you photos, but I want to talk about bush food first. Again.

Bush food doesn’t entirely occupy my attention – also in my line of sight today is a brand new second hand chafing dish. That was from Gorman House Market, though, and I don’t get to give you a pretty photo of the food stalls at the Show if I tell you about the chafing dish. Also, last post I did about the Show, I forgot a bunch of useful information without which your life would be incomplete. For instance (useful bit of information #1) the Royal Canberra Show is the second-biggest agricultural show in New South Wales. I love this piece of data, because Canberra isn’t actually part of NSW.

I found a whole variety of bush food on sale. Many stalls stocked macadamia nuts and oil, or sold lemon myrtle or even seasoned their produce with lemon myrtle. Lemon myrtle was so popular, in fact, that one showbag contained a bottle of Outback Spirit’s Lemon Myrtle Dressing.

Showbags are bags (plastic or totes or backpacks, depending on the target market – my bit of the target market is obviously superior, because I ended up with hardy totes that currently hold teaching notes just perfectly) containing discounted products. Most of the children’s ones are for candy or popular TV shows or film characters and are very little discounted indeed. The adult showbags, on the other hand, are bigger and better and more heavily discounted. They are selling samples, basically, to encourage you to buy their product. Whether it’s candy or face cream, you will find a sample in a showbag if the manufacturers want it to be seen across Australia.

To find lemon myrtle dressing in a showbag means that bush foods are beginning to come of age. It comes alongside finding them on supermarket shelves. It’s also a sign that Australian food is still changing. We may still eat our roast meats and our seafood, but finally we have locally-produced sauces based on native plants to dress them with.

Did I remember to say that my other current obsession is identifying what shifts in food habits add up to? History in the making. Now for that Show picture I promised: admire the Aussie food!

I lost a day. I think it was Sunday. Sorry about that. When I find it again, I’ll let you know.

Saturday was a great deal more interesting foodwise than Sunday. A friend and I went to the multicultural festival. It’s basically a food fair. A giant food fair. I started writing down all the different stalls and their food so I could do an analysis of modern multicultural celebrations in Canberra, but there were just so many and I wrote so quickly that I got home and found I couldn’t read a word.

I kept thinking that there is a real Jewish affinity for food, even in a town like Canberra, with its miniscule Jewish community. Sarah and I kept running into people we knew (not so surprising) and they were all Jewish (which was).

I shared a Finnish cheese tart and a bag of Samoan pastries (which were simply deep-fried dough) and had a really lovely glass of Algerian mint tea. I love mint tea made that way – thick and sweet and warming. I don’t make it myself, though, because if I were to eat that much sugar I would be jumping off the ceiling. My ceiling is one of those 1970s ones, with fire-disencouraging grey pebblethings, and so is not one to encourage jumping. If ever I get a nice white ceiling, maybe I can drink thick and sweet mint tea regularly.

One thing I noticed, simply because it was impossible not to notice. This was the biggest food fair of its kind I’ve seen in Canberra. Everyone came out and enjoyed eating. Add that to my course being booked out (and another one being set up in may for people who missed out), plus the newspaper article, plus the radio interview, plus the fact that there was Greek food yesterday and other foods at the Carnivale next weekend, plus the various farmers’ markets, plus the gourmet meat production and the wine and the growth in other local gourmet products and…. You can see where I’m going. There is an increased focus on food and its production and its history in Canberra right now. A wonderful emphasis, to be honest, because food is very powerful in bringing people together in friendship.

If someone were to write a snapshot of places and times and find out what is important to people in that place and at that time, then obviously fine food and interesting food and sharing food are all important right now in Canberra. It makes me wonder how many of my readers live in places where food has suddenly taken on a special significance?

There is so much talk around about the US elections. They’re going to be with us for most of this year, too. Rather than ignore them, I thought it would be fun to treat them as an adjunct to food history. After all, the US is probably the only country where the results of the elections affect the rest of the world so very much.

I’m not going to tally votes or discuss policies. I would like to, but this isn’t the right blog for that (I heard that sigh of relief from most readers – it was such a big sigh of relief that it crossed continents and oceans). What I’m going to do is sample various historic US cookbooks and find their recipes for election cakes. I might even find out what other politics emerges in those cookbooks, for the minority of you who didn’t heave a sigh of relief. Either way, we’re not talking modern politics.

I’ll be watching the vote count later in the year, because my best friend and I always do an online check of the world’s level of sanity. Here, though, you’ll find recipes and places where foodways intersect politics.

Politics and foodways have natural meeting points. Polling booths in Australia often sport a sausage sizzle, which is usually a fundraiser for a local school or a local community organisation. Parties and individuals fundraise with food and cookbooks and all sorts of exciting foodie things. If any of you have cookbooks sold at election time, please email me, and I’ll mention your book as part of this new series on election food.

Election food. There’s so much of it. Conventions can have food, and caucuses. Party meetings can have food and post election get-togethers. I can’t promise to explore all of these. I can promise the historical cookbooks and other curious stuff as the occasion arises. It’s going to be fun. Even if you hate politics, some of the cakes are scrumptious. Politics can bring happiness. Sometimes.

It’s Australia Day. Well, it was Australia Day until 44 minutes ago. The thing is, I didn’t post French recipes on Bastille Day (I don’t think I did, anyhow) or American Recipes on 4 July, or any other recipes on any other national day. So I won’t type out Australia day recipes for you here. What would I give you if I did? A selection of potato salads and some discussion of how the mayo got replaced by yoghourt and sour cream? No, it just doesn’t rock my boat tonight. There are some nice photos of Australia Day-ish things here, if this saddens you also, a link here to suitable Aussie recipes (though not potato salad, sorry).

What rocks my boat tonight is recipes from my late Grandmother’s notebook, because I spent a very long time on the phone to my kid sister today, talking deep and meaningfully about the history of coffee. This doesn’t mean I’m going to give you coffee recipes.

I prefer bananas.

There are many bananas around the moment and I can’t eat even one of them (I had an unfortunate set of experiences while I was away and I’m super-sensitised to some foods). I can still enjoy reading banana recipes, though, so that’s what I’m giving you: banana recipes from Melbourne in the 1950s.

The picture is for me, since you lot get to eat the bananas. I don’t think even I can be allergic to a moustache cup (picture by Donna, in case you’d forgotten).

Banana Cream Pie

Make short pastry. Roll out & line a flat tart tin. Prick well before cooking in moderate oven. Take 6 large bananas mash & mix with 1 cup whipped cream. Add to the cream 1 tablespoon castor sugar & ½ teaspoon vanilla. Fill shell with this mixture.

Beat whites of 2 eggs stiff add 3 tablesp granulated sugar. Beat until creamy spread over the top of tart & place in oven (slow) until the meringue is pale gold. Serve hot or cold.

Banana Cheese Toast

Beat 1 egg slightly & add ¾ cup milk, ¼ teaspoon of salt, 1 teasp sugar. Dip 6 slices of bread in this mixture & fry a golden brown. While hot, cut into squares & cover with sliced banana & then thick grated cheese.

Much of my life seems to be about menus at the moment. Mostly this is because I’m at that stage in researching the Conflux banquet, but it’s also because my friends and I all have various dietary restrictions and getting together for a meal requires just a little menu consideration if we’re all to enjoy ourselves.

Given that menus are on my mind, I have decided it’s time to inflict them on yours. Besides, there are so many books I want you to meet, and so little time!

Today’s book is John Lane’s A Taste of the Past. Its subtitle is Menus from Lavish luncheons, royal weddings, indulgent dinners and history’s greatest banquets. (more…)